Somebody's got to pay for those buckets of blood

A REPRESENTATIVE from Laos’ emergent film industry, director Mattie Do, is on the sidelines of the Cannes Film Festival, in the hunt for cash to make a movie.
Taking part in the La Fabrique Les Cinemas du Monde, a market event and masterclass for first- and second-time feature directors, she landed a deal with crowdfunding website IndieGoGo.com in partnership with the genre-movie hounds who run TwitchFilm.com.
Mattie needs cash to buy buckets of blood from her local fresh market in Vientiane, as well as other supplies, to make her sophomore feature, “Dearest Sister” (“Nong Hak”). It’s about a poor country girl who comes to the city to help her rich cousin, a blind girl who gets lottery numbers from the dead.
Produced by Douangmany Soliphanh and Lao Art Media, “Dearest Sister” is also supported by Lao Brewing Company, which explains why Mattie has been flogging Beerlao Gold up and down the Croisette in Cannes.
Her film is the followup to “Chanthaly”, a slow-burn ghost thriller that made history for being the first Lao horror movie and the first Lao feature directed by a woman. After premiering at 2012’s Luang Prabang Film Festival, it went on to screen at the Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, becoming the first Lao film to screen anywhere outside of Southeast Asia.
For fans who support the IndieGoGo campaign, Mattie has an array of amusing premiums to offer. For example, for $10, she’ll personally buy you a Lao lottery ticket, and send you a stack of kip if you win. And if you lose, you can join the production’s Instagram and follow the program. For $100, you get a bootleg DVD of “Chanthaly” – Mattie will personally lick the stamps to mail it you. If you give $1,000, you can work as a production assistant, and wrangle those buckets of blood. Contributors of $5,000 can act in the film – “be a skeevy sex tourist” – you’ll have to pay your own way to Bangkok, however.
Keep track of the progress by “liking” www.Facebook.com/nonghakdearestsister